Chapter Text
Here, barren land stretches forever in a never-ending winter. Life is an unsuitable companion to this world, yet there it is, persisting woefully. Despite all efforts to rectify, the bargain was struck and so the natural order corrupt.
In such a world, his persistence is a wound. His time limping forward in the yawning future that has no mercy. Once, annihilation might have arrived, but now he does not know if that is even a hope to kindle. Such considerations are not his anymore really, as he has forgotten his position.
At first, there is nothing left but time for him. There is nothing in this world but him, so he waits in a dead city that breeds only snow. If his mind were more coherent, he might find purpose but that option was excised without precision.
He remembers dreams eventually. Unlike his waking mind, which is haunted by nameless, faceless moments, his dreams offer escapes. Soon the dreams take on familiar shapes: others who look him but who are not so broken. The dreams are portal into those lives and soon they reveal what has been taken from him. These pathetic echos have what he does not. He cannot stand it, yet he cannot help but chase these dreams.
With the passage of time that he does not know how to count anymore, he is left with only the taste of losing what was once his. His hatred becomes his definition, replacing the wisdom gained from memories. Now, he waits only for sleep that brings the dreams, passing the time by constructing in his mind the form of his adversaries.
As a product of his dreams, his hand drums incoherently against his leg, then the wall, and then against the ground. All to seek new textures to resonate against, as if the medium is the reason why he cannot replicate what he knew once. He cannot grasp the exactness of the pattern, so the effort only encrypts further the portions of his mind that once loved and lived.
Time is the only change, and so, it is plentiful. So at some length, the variance of his efforts punctuate the pattern. The resonance, first given willingly then stripped, thrums through him from the tiny memory of that ownership. A breath of power loosed just long enough to perturb time and space. A perturbation enough to change the binding of the weave. Without a watcher, no alarm is raised and so the perturbation is borne out. He cannot be satisfied though, as satisfaction is not obtainable for one embalmed by such hatred as he.
After this moment, the rhythm changes and so the power is out of his hands. His fingers begin to pick at the braided cord of his ruined robes like it’s an accessible scab. The needling of his raw thumbnail against the frayed length is keeping the swirl of his thoughts from the brink of fission. The physical braid in his grasp a proxy for the one he would like to undo instead.
Again, he decides and searches for the pattern. He has all of time to find it.